Credit-Card Companies Explore New Ways To Monitor Gun Purchases

Following the deadly Valentine's Day shooting in Parkland, Fla., banks and credit card companies considered blocking consumers' gun purchases as corporate America engaged in a marathon virtue-signaling session to prove to their customers that they too care about the lives of students being endangered by gun violence.

Of course, these bans would've likely been temporary. Banks could've quietly withdrawn the restrictions once the public furor quieted down. However, some banks and credit card companies are now considering a more permanent move that would transform them into foot soldiers in the deep state's push to create a register of all gun owners. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that some lenders are now discussing ways to identify purchases of guns through their payment systems. This would effectively transform them into tools of the intelligence services by monitoring virtually all gun sales at sporting goods stores and other merchants that aren't transacted in cash.

As WSJ explains, card networks like Visa and Mastercard can request approval for what's called a merchant category code - or MCC - a protocol that's governed by a Switzerland-based nonprofit. The code can be applied to gun merchants so that banks can flag new gun purchases using their credit cards.

The lenders are still discussing what types of merchants would receive the new code. Would it be all gun sellers? Or just sporting-goods merchants but not companies like Wal-Mart that primarily sell other products.

One bank has even had conversations with lawmakers about a bill to require merchants to report ALL purchases of certain "gun-related" products.

Currently, card companies, including networks and banks that issue credit cards, have little to no insight into gun purchases. Gun sellers fall into broader categories such as sporting-goods retailers or specialty retail shops. Big-box retailers that also sell guns are often assigned codes that include "variety" or "discount" stores.

An area of discussion, according to the people familiar with the talks: How far reaching a new MCC would be. This code could identify purchases made at gun dealers—but not at merchants that primarily sell other products, such as Walmart Inc.

Some talks have gone further. At least one large U.S. bank has had early conversations with lawmakers about potential legislation to require merchants to share information about specific gun-related products consumers are buying with their cards, according to people familiar with the matter.

As WSJ reminds us, banks have at times blocked purchases of certain items that they believed to be risky, or part of a legal gray area. They also act as the front-line of defense in monitoring payments for suspicious - possibly terrorism-related - activity. And in rare instances, banks have stopped doing business altogether with politically unpalatable groups like the government of South Africa during the apartheid era.

Citigroup has already started restricting purchases of guns using its credit cards to users over the age of 21 (because the last thing these banks want to see is the next mass murderer using a Citigroup-branded credit card to make a fatal purchase).

This would also open up a new can of worms, as banks would encounter similar problems to those facing Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies as they decide how they should handle all the sensitive user data they are collecting.

"A bank could say, 'We’re not going to do business with gun manufacturers,'" said Jeremy Stein, a former member of the Federal Reserve board of governors who currently is an economics professor at Harvard University. "But when it gets into using the information, you’re getting into the same issues Facebook and others had problems with."

A dividing line, he added, would be whether banks are monitoring transactions for criminality. "If it’s just a policy objective, even if I liked the policy objective, I’d think it’s worrisome," Mr. Stein added.

Divisions exist within the financial-services industry, which previously has resisted pressure to restrict purchases of controversial products such as tobacco.

"We don’t think it’s a good idea for banks to decide what products and services Americans can buy," Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan said at the bank’s annual meeting last week. "It should not be up to me, to us, to decide that. It should be up to folks following the laws and folks making decisions."

Banks have experienced some political blowback as a result of their relationships with gun owners. The American Federation of Teachers announced it would cut ties with Wells Fargo & Co. over the bank's relationship with the National Rifle Association, as well as with several gun manufacturers.

But not as much as they would receive if they went ahead with the plan to flag all gun buys. With nearly half of Americans admitting to owning guns, we imagine most customers wouldn't take too kindly to their shopping habits being recorded and sent to the government.

They talk out of both sides of thier mouths. Look at what China is doing with thier citizen ranking system. It would be naive to assume that there isnt something already in place here in the US. The banking system is part and parcel of the deep state. It only takes an algorithm to track every purchase you make, create a profile on you....what you're eating, what you're reading, etc. It's already here.

Exactly. People haven't heard of paying a local business with hard currency or writing a local check?

OK, so everybody would like to buy at the market price that on-line sites facilitate but who wouldn't pay the marginal difference between the on-line price and the local market's price in order to maintain privacy?

Sort of on/off topic but if draconian laws against ammo purchases are passed, then 1) citizens are not voting in favorable lawmakers; 2) buy reloading equipment for an additional $500 equipment cost and recycle your brass.

Incidentally, most local businesses find their customers buying a weapon and paying with a CC rather than cash money. Seriously, how many purchases have you personally made in the past year, weapons or non-weapons related, with cash?

It is the banks who want to seize your cash. They want to seize your guns. The banks are sucking up to the globalists who hate Americans and the 2ndA. If your bank is rating you out you should get another bank.

So Citi and Bank of America and the rest of the cunts.. fuck them!!

Remember this if things get salty my friends, the banks made it very very clear they hated freedom, America, and at the very beginning had only designs to seize your guns and money.

And is it any wonder why I don't like cards. Cards are just a means of extorting more money from people via high interest rates. Anyone who lives using a card as a cash management tool is a fool. The only way forward is to sever your relationship with credit card issuers.

It's not even that this will push more people to BTC, I fail to see any reason why that would occur since BTC is not a substitute for cards, it's that it will push even more people into the cash market where your privacy is still somewhat intact.

These are the same fuckhead, pieces of shit that were bailed out and got bonuses in the millions with OUR fucking tax dollars. BRAZEN LITTLE MOTHERFUCKERS ! Bankers just made my kill list. Right after all of the politicians at the very top.

Q: Why did farmers & ordinary people (supporting William Jennings Bryan) in Midwest, West, South, support currency changes at all if the damn govt wasn't corrupt, if currency & banking wasn't corrupt, and if central banks weren't corrupt, if conservatism wasn't corrupt, if conservatism wasn't a unicorn in the 19th Century

Q: If Conservative Basis of Government, Business, Banking, Capitalism were all bullshit in 19th Century why would we 100% eschew the "New Deal" and Teddy, Hoover, Wilson, FDR... except for their apparent 'Fascist' support... why not support Anti-Trust for instance... support FTC, Demand SEC be given powers and be given forceful oversight against globalism?

"Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can’t really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism." -- Rothbard

I completely agree with this, they can't, or rather should not, be granted personhood because they will act without morality or values, they act only within the bounds of the law on a good day, and as far beyond the law as they can get the next.

I do remember. I took travelers checks to Kiev in '06. Biggest pain in the ass I've encountered overseas in decades. Finally found a bank that would talk to me but it took nearly 2 hours of dicking around with paperwork and being handed off to different department managers to get cash.

The cash advances you mention are debit card account related - they occur immediately - and are not relevant to credit cards. A CC user can charge a payment but if he settles his card charge balance before its due date then he is not penalized.